


In the Parting of the Clouds

by Becky_Blue_Eyes



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, Brutality, Child Death, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Haunting, Horror, Infant Death, Inspired by Ring, Not A Happy Ending, Psychological Horror, Seriously this is pretty messed up ngl, The Author Regrets Everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:48:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26513935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Becky_Blue_Eyes/pseuds/Becky_Blue_Eyes
Summary: (oh, she’s surely coming, surely coming)(everything in the season is white)On the night of the Sack, a princess and her two children are mutilated and murdered.(oh, the radiance you’ve been given is endless)(oh, the visions you’ve been given are fading)A new dynasty steps over their bones and many look the other way.(oh, feels like heaven, feels like heaven)(in the parting of the clouds)But not everyone does.(oh, feels like heaven, feels like heaven)(i can see an angel!—)Cersei never did find out where Myrcella’s favorite companion came from.Warning: this story contains explicit body horror, gore, and the deaths of multiple characters including children and infants. If this is not to your taste then do NOT read. Lyrics of "Feels Like Heaven" copyright by HIIH.
Relationships: Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Robert Baratheon/Cersei Lannister
Comments: 38
Kudos: 72





	In the Parting of the Clouds

Cersei scoffs when the servants mutter. It is the anniversary of the Sack and some of the lowly maids have it in their heads to have a memorial for the previous occupants of the Red Keep.

There will be no memorial, of course. Robert won’t acknowledge them. Cersei doesn’t think about them. And why should they? It’s not their fault that the Princess Elia was an idiot who couldn’t escape from the Red Keep in time—if Cersei was the one under siege, she would’ve found her way to Essos before Kings Landing fell. And if Cersei was the one married to Rhaegar in the first place, then he never would’ve strayed to begin with! No, Elia with her black eyes and flat chest and sickly constitution, she never deserved the crown. And the gods thought so as well, and her brats were no true dragons.

Now Cersei is queen, to a drunkard fool true but still a queen. Her father is Hand, her brother is Kingsguard, and she is pregnant. She smiles and places a hand on her swollen stomach. Soon she will give birth to her heir, her and Jaime’s beloved child, and he will be king one day. All is golden in her world.

So what if the shadows stretch long at night and she’s too chilled to go down the corridors? So what if the maids watch her with shifting eyes? Brown eyes, all of them, how miserably common. She tilts her chin up and keeps her strides long. Who will dare say that she does not deserve her crown? Who will dare deny her everything she is owed—

She curses as she stumbles against a low table. And again with the corner ledge. Pregnancy makes her unsteady on her feet. She would travel by palanquin if she could, but the Red Keep’s halls twist and turn like the innards of a rodent. Maegor the Cruel had no sense of space when he commissioned this travesty of a castle, but at least it is grand. At least the pale red stone pairs with her emerald eyes and golden hair and glittering jewels. Jewels of a queen, of a future queen mother. Mother must smile upon her from the seven heavens!

“Your Grace,” one of the septas, Cersei can’t bother with her name, bows her dowdy head. Her eyes are dark and dull, she must be a smallfolk. “Shall we pray to the Mother for your upcoming labor? The first is always the most dangerous.”

For Mother it was the second, but this idiot can hardly know that. Cersei allows it and they head to the castle’s private sept. The Sept of Baelor is far grander and worthier of her prayers, but even a year after the Sack of Kings Landing Cersei swears she can smell the smoke and blood still scorched to its marble. Robert laughs his boorish laugh when she wrinkles her nose at the omnipresent film over the sept and doesn’t believe her. It matters not, she supposes, as long as she has the castle sept.

And yet, even with the incense rich in the air and cushions padded beneath her knees, Cersei feels filth. It clings to the walls, the ceiling, the polished floors—she wonders if she can run her finger through it. She presses a hand to the floor and rubs before holding it to her face. On her pale palm curls one long black hair. She shudders at the contrast between the black hair and the white skin, of its alien presence. “Have this entire sept cleaned,” she commands and the septas flutter around her like headless chickens. “I won’t have the Mother cursing my birth on account of some servant’s disgusting habits.”

Cersei looks up at the Mother, half-laughing to herself to imagine the statue’s face twisted in disgust like her own. But she startles. Since when did the Mother have dragonglass eyes? All of the statues do, in fact, and the Stranger is entirely cloaked in it. The blinding white marble against the black stone turns her stomach. She shakes her head and stands back up. She’ll have the statues renovated, emerald eyes for the Mother and Maiden of course.

She turns to leave. And in the swirling incense all she can see are the black eyes of the Stranger before the clumsy emptyheaded idiot septa bumps into her and Cersei falls on her stomach.

Everything is agony. Cersei screams as the maesters and septas try to save her son. Her son! Pressure crackles in her womb like lightning in a storm cloud, striking over and over, breaking her to pieces of gore. She screams for her brother, for her father, for anyone. Robert runs away and the towels beneath her soak dark red and it’s so bright in her rooms. Who opened the window curtains? Cersei can hardly see in the blinding light! White, and red, and white, and red, and the wide black eyes of the midwife pulling out her son.

Her son. Her son! Cersei gags.

What has become of her son?!

She shrieks until her voice is too raw to whisper, she thrashes until her body is mottled with bruises. But all of her pain and terror won’t fix her son. Her sweet little boy, his ten little fingers and toes, her Joffrey…his head is _crushed._

Cersei shrieks and points a shaking finger at the clumsy whore who killed her son. The fall crushed her babe’s head in her womb! Murder! “Seize her! She has killed our prince!” The septa’s eyes are blue in the light and fill with terror but Cersei won’t have it. She’ll have the head of that wicked bitch who murdered her son! Her son!

Her son is dead!

He is dead and Cersei _howls._

~~when a page whispers that it’s an ill omen for the prince to die on such a black day, cersei has his tongue ripped off and fed back to him~~

* * *

Cersei stands with the waves licking at her feet. Robert has it in his head to take his sniveling brat of a brother Renly swimming. Never mind that Cersei cannot swim as she once again with child, never mind that dour miserable Stannis is still too weak to swim with his emaciated arms. Renly shrieks that he wants to go out deeper into the swell and splashes Robert in the face. She raises her eyebrows at Jaime who winks at her. She lets herself smile and cradles her arms around her middle. This one, this one will stick, she can feel it.

Robert laughs and pulls Renly out deeper. They are in a private cove of the Blackwater Bay, away from the stink of the public beaches. Not even the servants come here to do laundry and the water is a rich deep blue deepening to midnight black beneath the overcast sky. Cersei rolls her eyes. She calls out, “You must be careful!” Leave it to Robert to turn a day of swimming into a day of shrieking. Anything can happen with such an ill-bred brat like Renly, left to run wild in Storm’s End. He could catch a cold, he could get sick with a belly full of seawater, he could be get sunburned…well, it’s all Robert’s doing, whatever happens.

She turns her back on the beach and looks up at the Red Keep. The sun is oppressive even with the blanket of clouds and the castle reflects its glare. She shields her eyes and calls out for a maid to bring her parasol. The maid is some common Crownlands girl with the common Crownlands look of dull hair and dull eyes. Cersei must bring more Westerlands girls, more proper Lannister girls. The parasol doesn’t do much and Cersei groans. It’s not even a proper spring with gentle winds and fluffy clouds, it’s as grim as winter with all the sweat of summer. The idiots are still screaming in the water and the sound grates on her nerves. Cersei turns back towards the water and yells, “Robert, I’m returning to the castle.”

Robert does not respond. His head bobs above the waves and his yells strangle with the water washing over and over his head. Jaime narrows his eyes, before swearing and pulling at his armor. Cersei can’t see Renly. Where is he? Dread coils in her stomach. They’re out too deep, the waves are far stronger beyond the first row of sea rocks and they crash like thunder over Robert’s head. Where is Renly?

“Jaime, do something! Kingsguard!” But all of the Kingsguard have their armor on, shiny and white and too heavy to swim in. Cersei covers her face from the sun glaring off the white armor, off the white beach rocks, off the glimmer of the black seas. The maid weeps into her hands and some smallfolk gather at the cliffs. She yells up at them to save their king. But they just watch with their faces burning in the sun, their eyes peeking out from their fingers.

The sea by Casterly Rock is a glittering blue the same depth and clarity as an aquamarine held up to the light. But the Blackwater Bay deserves its title. Blackwater, with waves pounding and pounding and pounding like ink spilling out of a bottomless bottle. Did the smallfolk know? No one else comes to this cove, did they know about the rocks beneath the dark waters? How they snag the legs of children between spires and hold them beneath the waves? Robert is not a good swimmer for all his boasts, too fearful of the ocean after his parents drowned. And the Kingsguard take too long to strip themselves of armor and swords, they are clumsy in their terror. And the sun is relentless the overcast sky burns a vicious brand into Cersei’s eyes and she shivers at how blank and unforgiving that white sky is against that angry black sea.

A sea so black that it stains Renky’s puffy lips black, plasters his black hair to his bloated black face, washes the clotting black blood from his twisted black leg.

Robert cried for his wretched Lyanna on their wedding night, but this is the first time Cersei hears him _wail._

~~his coffin is small. not as small as her babe’s, but small enough for robert to carry in one arm~~

* * *

Cersei brushes her daughter’s hair. Myrcella’s hair is mostly blonde, the exact shade as hers, save for one streak of black. Robert is delighted to see it, even though Cersei knows for a fact that Myrcella is hers and Jaime’s. Grandmother Jeyne had dark auburn hair, didn’t she? Perhaps from there the errant streak came. And Myrcella’s eyes are dark green, like the pine forests stretching along Casterly Rock’s holdings. A perfect daughter, sweet and smiling. And Cersei fears this shall be the only child she will have.

The witch promised her three children with golden crowns, but she also promised them golden shrouds. A golden shroud draped over Joffrey’s body, and Tommen’s, and the one Cersei didn’t bother to name. Each one born with their heads crushed in by the pressure of a terrible accident. A fall in the sept. A collapsing table with rotten legs. Robert slapping Cersei and knocking her down. No matter how many times Cersei prayed to the Mother, to the Stranger, they all died. Only Myrcella was allowed to live, only her sweet girl. Robert beats her for it and Cersei even allowed his seed to take root in her to see if it was Jaime’s fault, but no. No, every son—and they were all sons, all golden lions who could’ve golden kings—was born dead.

By Targaryen law Stannis is Robert’s heir, but he is not long for the world. Cersei sees it, everyone sees how no matter how much Stannis eats he doesn’t gain weight. She shudders to remember how much food he crams down his throat with withered trembling hands, how his sunken cheeks filled out and the skin was so brittle and translucent Cersei swore she could see the mush on his cracked tongue…the Grand Maester has no answer for it, no one does. He is too weak to ever set foot on the castle Robert gave to him, too weak to sire any child on his sour fishwife. He will be naught but bones to bury alongside Renly soon enough.

“Mama?” Myrcella pats her chubby little hands on Cersei’s cheeks. “Mama, why are you sad?”

“It’s nothing, my love.” Cersei kisses her forehead. “Let’s go find your little friends.”

Myrcella is the only heir they will have and Cersei will see her with a golden crown on her brow. And she has paid a thousand times over for that witch’s prophecy, Myrcella shall never have a golden shroud.

Her little friends are in the sept having a lesson with their septa. They are from the Crownlands and Stormlands, and Myrcella’s favorite is some marcher lord’s daughter. Cersei can hardly remember any of their names. Aelinor and Leyla and Selantha and other insipid names like that, and none of them hardly matter in the long run. Poor little Melara hardly mattered in the end, didn’t she? Aelinor smiles at Myrcella with her gap teeth and unremarkable brown eyes and says, “Princess! It’s singing today!”

Idiot child. Cersei lingers and listens to what they’re singing. Ah, it’s a hymn for the Maiden, Mother and Crone, Cersei remembers Mother singing it to her. The septa bows to Cersei and asks, “Your Grace, would you do us the honor of singing with us?” Myrcella sticks out her little bottom lip and clasps her hands in hope, and Cersei cups her cheek. Anything for her sweet girl. And the hymn is one of the more tolerable ones, if absolutely repetitive and foolish.

_“Oh, She’s surely coming, surely coming; everything in the season is white_

_Oh, the radiance You’ve been given is endless_

_Oh, feels like heaven, feels like heaven; in the parting of the clouds_

_Oh, feels like heaven, feels like heaven; I can see an Angel!_

_-_

_Oh, She’s surely coming, surely coming; everything is miraculously white_

_Oh, the visions You’ve been given are fading_

_Oh, feels like heaven, feels like heaven; in the parting of the clouds_

_Oh, feels like heaven, feels like heaven; I can see an Angel!”_

Myrcella is Cersei’s angel. And with the light pouring through the windows and setting her hair alight she looks just like one, just like the Maiden. She smiles up at Cersei and for a moment her eyes are black in the shadow, before they are green again. Cersei smiles and ignores the cramp aching in her belly.

Indeed, in the shadow of the light all the girls’ eyes look so dark, as black as the dragonglass eyes of the statues.

* * *

Sometimes Cersei dreams terrible dreams. Of Mother being torn in half by Tyrion. Of herself being torn in half giving birth to a dead son. Of Myrcella vomiting up blood and her stupid little friend swimming in it. Of the sky catching on fire and the stone walls melting around her and the dragon bones beneath the castle coming alive. But worst of all is when Cersei is trapped in an endless cloud.

No matter where she looks or turns, it is all white. Bright, burning, baleful white. In turns the smell of incense and smoke and burning meat choke her throat until she weeps tears of blood. When she screams the cloud muffles her voice around her head until her body rings and aches from the echoes of her own terror. She cannot walk forward, she cannot walk back, she can only exist suspended in such terrible white.

And then the clouds part, and in the parting of the clouds there is a terrible black void like the bottom of the sea, and Cersei screams but the void takes her and all is black, heaving destroying black, black like nameless horror of death and desecration, ~~black~~ against the ~~white~~ clouds so vicious and ugly and rotten. It is her end in the ~~black~~ void between the ~~white~~ clouds and Cersei wakes up screaming until Robert slams the door shut on his way to the whorehouse.

Every night. Every night Cersei dreams, ever night Cersei suffers, every night she confronts the ~~white~~ horror and ~~black~~ terror until her ~~red~~ tears drown her.

* * *

She hesitates before knocking on the door. Robert doesn’t answer, but she enters anyway. The corpse on the bed is still alive, somehow. But Stannis has always been stubborn, and there is still fire burning in his sunken eyes. Robert hunches over by the bed and for all his girth he is diminished like the sea after a storm ~~like the sea that killed his brother like the storm that killed his parents~~. Cersei carefully lays her hand on his shoulder. He trembles beneath her touch. “Can the maesters do anything?” She makes sure her voice is low. What use is there hurting them now when already so much has been taken from them?

“He eats more than us combined but it won’t stick. They’re inventing some potion or whatever else, but…” Robert looks up at her and the despair in his eyes takes her breath away. “I can’t bury another brother, I can’t bury any more of my family.”

Cersei imagines watching Jaime waste away, imagines Jaime drowning and slipping through her fingers. Her eyes burn and she forces herself to smile. “Stannis is strong, my husband. He, and our Myrcella, they are Baratheons and theirs is the fury.” Let the gods hear Myrcella roar if they dare to try and take her too! Myrcella lingers in the doorway with her little bedmaid Yvette clinging to her skirts. Myrcella is truly the best of Houses Lannister and Baratheon, half her hair inky ~~black~~ and her eyes such dark green. Robert looks up and smiles at her and Myrcella scampers in and hugs him around the waist.

Robert murmurs his thanks to Cersei and kisses her cheek. An odd cloak of fondness descends over her shoulders. Stannis is still breathing, for now, and she prays that he will survive whatever illness this is. Didn’t Queen Visenya of old die of a flesh wasting disease? But after she had had her son, after she had nearly won the Iron Throne. Stannis ought to do well to follow in the steps of his ancestor. Inspiration strikes her, and she clutches Robert’s hand. “We must have another child. We will name him for your brothers, your father—he will live this time, I swear it.”

She does. She needs a son to be king, she needs a brother for Myrcella…she needs to give Robert something.

Cersei prays, over and over, as Robert takes her that night, over and over. She prays for a son. She prays for a son to live, for his head to be whole. She prays, and the seven heavens flash behind her eyes as she searches desperately for the Mother. Celestial clouds, bright ~~white~~ clouds over a ~~black~~ starry sky—Cersei prays and she hopes and she begs, and she holds Robert close as his family falls apart.

* * *

Varys’s rooms are in a disarray. Half his belongings are strewn on the floor and the other half stuffed into trunks and boxes. Cersei sidesteps a pile of discarded clothes and demands, “So you will abandon your king like a coward?”

He whirls around and his face is beaded over with sweat. There’s animal terror in his eyes, in the way his hands tremble and how his eyes skitter from one corner to the next. His voice is deeper than she’s ever heard it. “When I was a boy, I was sold to a man who had dark intentions. He cut off my manly parts, put them in a brazier and burned them. And when he spoke to the flames the flames spoke back. They spoke then, and they speak now!”

“What are you talking about—”

“I know you’ve heard them! There is something _evil_ here and I can feel its hatred. And I will not be consumed by it!” He grabs her by the upper arms and shakes her. “It will consume you if you stay here, Your Grace! You need to leave!”

“My place is here!” Cersei can hardly breathe. The walls are narrower here, this little hovel is as cramped as a grave. But are not all the rooms in this blasted castle not a grave? Big graves, little graves, opulent graves, pauper’s graves—how many people have met their bloody ends in these walls? Cersei clutches at her bodice. Her stomach heaves and she begs the babe inside to hold on for the full ten moons, not a moment sooner. “I—I cannot leave here. I can’t.”

Where could she possibly go? If she leaves, what stops Robert from replacing her? What stops Father from replacing her? She has no power that doesn’t come from her own grasping hands and her husband’s title—where could she go except here? She is under siege and all the escape routes are lost to her. All she can do now is persevere until her son is born a king, until gods forbid Myrcella becomes queen.

Varys shakes his head and looks away. Then he rummages in a box, before handing her a corked bottle of impressively vintage Pentoshi brandy. “Every night pour a bit of this in your sleeping quarters and your daughters’. Any spirit will do, it can be pisswater for all it matters. But if it tastes too foul to swallow, do not sleep there. It may be your last.”

Cersei feels cold. The cold clings to her long after Varys slips away into the night, long after Robert demands where he’s gone and she just shrugs and says to hire someone new with a stronger stomach. The cold burns her breath away, like she’s trapped somewhere cold and dark. Did Melara feel like this at the bottom of her well? How long did it take for the water to kill her, or the hunger, or the cold?

She looks out the window of her chambers over the Blackwater Bay. What did they do with Melara’s body? ~~What did they do with Elia’s?~~ She pours herself a thimble glass of brandy. It tastes of ash and bile.

In her chambers, in Myrcella’s, in her fathers’ and her husband’s and her brother’s and the chambermaids’. In the end Cersei puts Myrcella to sleep in her bed and sits up the entire night, drinking more and more ash and staring at the ~~black~~ hair caught in a lonely cobweb.

* * *

Cersei brushes her hair in front of her silver mirror. She is thinner than she used to be, despite her pregnancies. They all are, save Myrcella and her chubby cheeks. Robert is in a whorehouse weeping and fucking and beating, and she hopes he can find some peace. Stannis will not survive the night, the maesters say. Father sits in her hair. He is grimmer than ever, as House Baratheon shall wither down to one man. Who could imagine such a fate would befall the mighty stormlords? What dower lands will Cersei have when she is left alone?

She rests her hand on her stomach. This boy will be king, and Myrcella will have to be Lady of Storm’s End, and they will have to make contingencies for it. Which house does Myrcella’s little companion Tansy come from again, Estermont? Penrose? She wants to ask Father to check if there’s proper second sons for Myrcella to marry, but she can hardly bring herself to speak at all. All her energy goes into brushing her hair, into feeling her babe tumble in her womb, into swallowing ash.

Father abruptly stands up. “I must return to Casterly Rock. Jaime had written me, and it appears that Tyrion has run off and fancied himself a wife in a…cartwright’s orphan. Once I have it done away with I’ll be back, and hopefully you’ll still be pregnant when I return.”

Cersei stares at her stomach. “I want this baby more than you could possibly imagine, Father.”

“The whole of the realm depends on it. I don’t want Myrcella to suffer the same fate that Rhaenys and Rhaenyra did.”

“Which Rhaenys?” The words spill out of her mouth before she can close it. Father stares down at her and Cersei brushes her hair with quick anxious strokes. “I heard the servants whispering again. They say that we upset the gods on account of the Targaryens’ deaths and that all this is…”

“Lions do not concern themselves with the opinions of sheep.” But the words ring hollow this ~~black~~ night, when stags starve to death on a full table and kings are born with caved in heads. ~~Did Mother concern herself with the maester’s opinion when Tyrion ripped her in half?~~

Cersei looks up at him. “Tell me the truth, Father. Did you have—did you have them killed during the Sack? Where are the bodies?” They say that Aegon’s head was smashed in on a wall, that Rhaenys was stabbed half a hundred times, that Elia was raped in half and cleaved in quarters. But their blood was washed away and their bones done away with long before Cersei ever entered the Red Keep! She clenches her fist around her brush until the bristles eat at her palm. “Did you even have them buried?”

“The knights who killed them were acting on their own accord. War is something you could never understand, Cersei, it changes men.” He looks away. “Do you wish to hold them on trial? To dig up bad memories? Let the past lie and focus on our future.”

“…and their bodies?”

“The king could not bear to have dragonspawn in his castle, so they were disposed of in the sea.”

So simple, so succinct. Father leaves to go reign in Tyrion’s folly and Cersei ponders her mirror. Did Elia have a mirror? Did she sit before it and brush her long ~~black~~ hair while her children clung to her ~~white~~ shift? What was left of her ~~red~~ ruin after Lannister men were finished with her and her children? Cersei trembles. She raises her brush to her hair, then drops it with a shriek.

Coils of long ~~black~~ hair trap themselves in the bristles.

She looks up and it’s not her in the mirror, it’s _her,_ and Cersei screams ~~when her eyes bleed and she screams with a mouth with no teeth left in from where Clegane smashed them all out and stares with sockets with no eyes left in them from where Clegane squeezes them all out, and the sound shrieks higher and higher until Cersei’s head explodes~~

Cersei shoves herself away from the mirror and throws a goblet of wine at it. The mirror shatters to reveal its rotten wooden back, and the wine curdles on the floor with a curling glob of hair.

* * *

She awakens to wails outside her chambers. Father is dead.

Father is dead.

_How?!_

He never made it out of the Red Keep. He tripped down the stairs of Maegor’s Holdfast and tumbled out a window into the moat below. They didn’t find his impaled body until morning ~~, his mouth torn open around the black iron spike shooting out from his throat and his hands feebly twisted around his collar~~ , and Cersei shuts all the drapes and windows in her chambers and pours the rest of the brandy over the broken mirror shards.

“I know you’re here!” she yells. Her voice is oddly muffled, it doesn’t want to choke its way out because to speak means to acknowledge that Father is _gone_ and Cersei is alone in his hell with no way out. “Show yourself you bitch!”

“Mama?” Myrcella peeks her dark head around the corner—no, it’s actually Valaena, Myrcella clings to the back of her dress like a conjoined freak. “Mama, why are you angry?”

“Sweetling, go find your septa!” Cersei blocks Myrcella from entering, from the evil reaching her beloved daughter. The girl just stands there with her wide dark eyes and Cersei screams, “GO!”

She scampers away and someone laughs behind Cersei. “I told my daughter to go too. But I’m afraid your men were faster.”

“Leave her out of this!” Cersei whirls around she’s alone. But what is alone in this hell? What can happen that already hasn’t? “Don’t touch her! She is mine, you can’t hurt her!”

 ~~Little girls are hurt all over the world~~ , Cersei hears. There is something wrong with that voice. Cersei scratches at her ears. There’s something _wrong_ with that voice! ~~There’s something wrong with her voice!~~

She scratches and scratches until she unearths something jagged from her ear. She rips it out and lying in her bloodied palm is a torn fingernail. And there! In her arm, in her thigh, in her breast, in the floors, there’s shredded fingernails! Long and ~~white~~ and hideous! Cersei screams and tears at her skin to get them all out. Then it’s all ~~red~~ , and beneath her bloodied nails is ~~black~~ , hideous congealed ~~black~~ , and Cersei slams her fists into the broken glass on the ground. She digs the glass beneath her nails to get the ~~black~~ out, the ~~red~~ out, the ~~white~~ out, ~~the wrongness festering out of her~~

“CERSEI!” Jaime hugs her from behind and drags her away from her mess. When did he get here? What day is it? He drags her into the light and it burns her eyes until all she can see is the crushed heads of her babes burned into her soul.

The light recedes and she’s in someone’s guest rooms. Jaime bandages her hands. All of her nails are gone. They’re gone. Cersei blinks up at Jaime, and tears drip down her chin. “What is happening to us?”

“This place is poison,” and there’s fevered light in his eyes. “Do you really think Father just fell down the stairs and out a window? That Stannis just starved to death after eating enough to feed a horse? If I were a betting man I’d bet on the Dornish, or maybe Blackfyres trying to reinstate themselves—”

It washes over Cersei like clouds parting after a storm. Jaime will save her, save her children. They will not die here! He will save her!

“—heard that Varys made it to Pentos and changed his name, he’s a dead end, but we have money. We’ll buy passage to Winterfell, Ned Stark loves Robert and Robert can meet us there, but we need to leave now!”

“I love you,” Cersei breathes. Jaime cups her cheek and she kisses his palm. “I’m so afraid.”

“I will never let anything hurt you,” he swears. Cersei’s heart fills with light.

He helps her to her feet and Cersei calls for a maid to collect her daughter. The idiot brings Isolde instead and Cersei ~~snatches a handful of black hair out of the maid’s head~~ and shakes her. No, they will taker Myrcella and escape. “We must put Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch on trial,” she declares. The light filling her soul propels her forward. They run down towards the armory as it is close to the stables. “They committed a crime and my son will not inherit a lawless land. Send their tarred heads to the Dornish to make peace—and find the bones in the bay, they must still be there somewhere—”

“Slow down, let’s get to Winterfell first.” And Cersei laughs because it’s like they’re children again and escaping from the septa. Indeed, septas trail behind them, clucking like hens about Cersei running in her state. But she’s fine, the light is bright in her, it’s as bright and

~~and it’s white~~

~~and it’s as white~~ as Jaime’s Kingsguard armor, the White Lion in splendor. The best armor money can buy in Westeros, only matched by the best swords that legacy can buy. So many swords are in the armory from a hundred long gone knights. And she’s a clumsy idiot. She trips on her own skirts, and the tear is loud enough to shock him into grabbing her arm. But she’s heavy with child, and she falls upon him and he falls upon a rack holding up swords and there is a cacophony of metal striking stone and her bones cracking together and terrible shrieking just outside her hearing.

And Jaime coughs up blood.

She crouches on her knees and his sword is out of his scabbard, his Valyrian steel sword has punched through his back, along with half a hundred more. Jaime struggles to reach her from his pincushion, and Cersei hears his flesh rend into ~~red ruin~~. The septas cry for help and Myrcella-Tomasin weeps into Cersei’s skirts and Cersei…

Cersei closes her eyes ~~but she still sees him die she still sees him die she still feels her heart rip its way from her chest and be cleaved in quarters still beating and there’s no escaping this there’s none she is going to die here she is going to die here she is going to d i e~~

* * *

“When will it be enough for you? When all my loved ones are in the ground? I didn’t have you killed! Jaime, I know he should’ve protected you, but he was dealing with the Mad King, he couldn’t have been in two places at once! Not even Robert or Father did, it was an accident! Robert didn’t mean it when he called them dragonspawn, he was just angry, I swear it! I did nothing to deserve this, we are innocent! We did nothing wrong!

“At least tell me what Renly did to deserve to die! What about Stannis? They were in Storm’s End for the entire war starving, they did nothing to you! And my sons! My babies! You crushed in their heads, childslayer! How dare you judge me for what you’ve done! Was it not enough for your son to die, you had to kill all of mine?!

“Maybe if you hadn’t hidden in the nursery like a fool you would’ve lived! You should’ve run! You should’ve surrendered, maybe your son had to die but not you or your daughter! You let yourselves be killed! This is all your own fault! You cannot blame me for it! _You cannot do this to me!”_

“Mama?”

But it’s not Myrcella, because Myrcella has long ~~black~~ hair and bright ~~black~~ eyes, but this girl has blonde hair and green eyes, and Cersei slaps her and screams at her to get out, get out, GET OUT! Then she turns back but _she’s_ not there anymore, it’s just a wall, and the ground is filthy with nail clippings and hair, and she’s not in her chambers but the dismal room where the silent sisters prepare Jaime and Father and Stannis’s bodies, and they all look up at her with blank ~~black~~ eyes where Cersei can see the void shimmering within, judging her, finding her wanting.

* * *

~~Cersei catches Elia laughing at her from her bath and she grabs her and drowns her and bashes her head in but then Elia turns into a mass of black hair and it shoots down Cersei’s mouth and nose and chokes her from the inside and Elia keeps laughing and laughing and she asks how does it feel and Cersei screams that it hurts and then the hair splits her in half from the inside and Elia asks again how does it feel and Cersei screams and screams until the bath water spills over the floor and she is alone shivering and naked before the fire covered in long coiling black hair and vomiting more hair all over ground and Robert can do nothing no one can not while Elia stands there laughing and laughing with her black eyes gouged out and black hair ripped out and torn off white nails still lodged in Cersei’s throat~~

* * *

She tells Robert to leave the castle when she gives birth, she does not trust the stairs to not throw him against a wall, she does not trust the servants with his life. She barricades herself in her chambers with all the windows bolted closed and the hearths snuffed out. She is freezing cold but she cannot risk the fire scorching her babe, she cannot risk the clouds parting and the light coming down to crush him. She prays like she’s never prayed before in her life. Not even as hard as when Myrcella was born, as when Joffrey was born dead, as when Mother died and the little monster crawled out of her body.

Please, she beseeches the gods. Please, let her keep this one son! Let her give the Iron Throne and Houses Baratheon and Lannister a healthy heir! She will do anything, say anything, become anything—if only she can keep this one child!

Pain rends her senseless and she screams her prayers until her voice shreds to raw nothingness. Little girls with dull dark eyes and dull dark heads peek from around corners and she can’t tell which one is Myrcella. Where is Myrcella? She tells a maid to go fetch her daughter so that Cersei may present her with a brother.

And what a brother he is! In her mind’s bleary eye, she sees her little boy. A sweet child, with blonde hair so fair it shimmers white in her fingers. Chubby cheeks, tiny hands and feet, big eyes as dark blue as the seas. He is perfect. He gurgles against her breast and she weeps with joy because he is alive! He is alive!

He gurgles and blinks up at her. And a bloody tear trickles down his cheek. Then another, and another. Cersei scrambles to press a cloth to his face but she cannot move. No, she watches as her little boy holds a toy ball in his tiny hands, and he squeezes. He squeezes, and something cracks and caves in on the side of his temple, and his eyes pop out and roll onto Cersei’s stomach. Cersei begs him to stop! Stop it! Stop it! STOP IT! STOP IT!

But he squeezes and squeezes the little ~~red~~ ball until his head is the little ~~red~~ ball and is a ruin of gore between her legs and Myrcella is nowhere to be found the maid says with her bright black eyes before the maid stares at the run between Cersei’s legs and the maid screams and they all scream and the walls melt around her caught aflame and Cersei thrashes and thrashes until they let her go and when she falls onto the floor they are all gone the boy is swept away like he was never there and where is Myrcella? where is Robert?

Cersei looks out the window and sees Robert hanging from the Tower of the Hand ~~his lips black his face black his eyes black his tongue black~~ because his family is gone and Cersei’s family is gone and she

she is all alone—

* * *

She hears it everywhere. Everywhere. No matter where she turns she hears the song and it peels the air like the skin off ginger root to flake into her ears clogging them and pressing against her brains until they come out her nose and Cersei hears it everywhere. The radiance she’s been given is endless and the visions she’s been given are fading and in the parting of the clouds she can see, she can see—

~~black eyes everywhere, watching, WATCHING~~

Where is Myrcella? Cersei runs through the halls. There are many halls in the Red Keep. Where do they all lead? They go and they go and the walls get closer and closer and the stones are redder and redder and the light is brighter and brighter through the windows where the sky outside is closer and closer and the clouds are whiter and whiter and whiter and WHITER AND—

**WHERE IS MYRCELLA?**

Cersei screams and shrieks until the skin of her teeth peel off and flake down her throat to shred it into a thousand bloody slivers in a pigeon pie. It regurgitates out of her eyes and she can’t see she can’t smell she can’t hear she can’t feel she can’t think she can only scream. A maid looks at her and she has ~~black~~ eyes that Look At Her like Cersei is crazy but Cersei just wants her Myrcella and where. is. she. but the maid just looks and Looks ~~and LOOKS~~ until Cersei wraps her hands around her throat and wrings the lies out.

“Where is she?!” Where is she?! Where is she?!

The maid laughs. Cersei wrings her head around three times but the laughs don’t stop. She pulls her head off and the walls are redder and redder but the laughter is louder and louder. How? HOW?!

“Don’t you know?” Does she? The maid’s head smiles with her ~~black~~ eyes and ~~black~~ hair. Cersei down at her hands and she’s covered in ~~black~~ hair, she tears at her clothes but more ~~black~~ hair comes out she tears at her skin but more ~~black~~ hair comes out she tears at her eyes but more ~~black~~ hair comes out and she wails she w a i l s.

The hair twists around her ankles and pulls her down the halls. Cersei claws the ground and with a hot flash a nail rips off, then the other, then the other, then them all until the ground is sharp and jagged and shreds off her skin with so many nails that they can’t possibly be Cersei’s can they? CAN THEY? Some are small, little girl’s nails, and Cersei screams for Myrcella

Where is Myrcella

Where is Myrcella

~~who is myrcella~~

Pale hands wrap around her pale throat. Cersei looks up and she’s smiling she’s smiling _Elia_ is smiling with eyes as black as pitch as midnight as the void beneath the seas where they threw her bones as the hells that crush babies heads and drown little boys and break the bones of grown men. Cersei opens her mouth and black hair erupts out in a geyser. Hair and blood and hair and blood and the light through the windows is so bright it illuminates Elia in a glorious halo.

It’s so white! So white! The clouds part and everything is miraculous **white!**

Myrcella laughs and laugh and laughs behind Elia but she’s not Myrcella she hasn’t been Myrcella in a long time and there’s a golden crown on her head and a bright white shroud beneath it and she says Mama to Elia and Elia twists her long mottled neck around to kiss Myrcella’s forehead and Myrcella will be queen she will be queen that never was and she’s laughing she’s

she’s laughing and the sound explodes in beautiful blinding burning white through Elia’s black eyes and she squeezes and squeezes and _squeezes_ and Cersei shrieks as the pressure finally gives her head is ripped from her shoulders

~~and hell is not black it’s not black it’s white it’s white it’s white it’s **W H I T E**~~

* * *

They all bow their heads as Myrcella ascends the throne. So young, so sweet, so burdened with the loss of her entire family in a terrible string of accidents, but still so strong. Westeros shall have its first Queen Regnant and she keeps her shoulders straight and back tall. Already she has reforms for the poor on her mind, and has called for a trial against those who killed poor Princess Martell and her babes. Already they have such a kind, gracious queen!

She sits on the throne, with a crown of gold in her lovely black hair, with a dress the same vivid shade as her lovely black eyes. And in the parting of the clouds the sun illuminates bright across her face.

**Author's Note:**

> The lyrics are a lyrical English translation of the chorus from HIIH’s “Feels Like Heaven” (it’s in Japanese and the literal translations weren’t as nice so there’s a couple liberties taken in the interpretation). For those who didn’t know, this is the song that plays in the credits of the original Ring movie. This upbeat uplifting song is about Sadako coming to kill people through her curse lmao yikes
> 
> It’s said in various religions that people who die violent deaths often come back as malevolent spirits, especially if they never receive justice and/or their bodies are desecrated. In Japan there is the onryo, a vengeful spirit come back to enact their revenge on the living world after the injustice it suffered. Sadako, as well as Kayako from Ju-on/The Grudge, are famous examples of onryo in media, with their long black hair and white dresses and bloody fates. And in this story, Elia and her children, and the pain and terror and rage they felt as they were murdered (and the way they died DEFINITELY MEETS THE THRESHOLD FOR THIS), manifested to doom those who had caused and benefited from their deaths. Whether they were innocent or not.
> 
> Aegon didn’t let any of Cersei’s male children be born because he never got to live so why should they? Elia tormented those who benefitted from her torment before killing them in horrible ways as she had been killed. Rhaenys slowly took over and possessed Myrcella’s body to make it her own and be the queen that she never got to be. 
> 
> In the end, Cersei could do nothing but scream.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Ring of Quartz](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27723929) by [Wintercameandwent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wintercameandwent/pseuds/Wintercameandwent)




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